New Horror Novels: 18 Books to Keep You Scared in 2021

This feminist horror novel champions female friendship while also being scary as heck. It all kicks off on one hot summer night when Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline decide to hold a séance. They all think it’s just a bit of fun until Fernanda starts acting strange, crawling on the floor and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Her strange behavior doesn’t end there. Over the next few weeks, Fernanda is like a completely different person. The local priest is certain Fernanda is possessed by a demon, but Lourdes thinks it might be something much more powerful. And more dangerous.

If you like your horror with a huge helping of humor and satire, pick up A Touch of Jen. This is the story of Remy and Alicia, a couple that are bound together not so much because of their love for each other but because of their love for Jen. Jen used to be Remy’s coworker, but now she’s following her dreams, becoming an Instagram influencer and a jewelry designer. When Remy and Alicia run into Jen and she invites them on a surfing trip, they’re absolutely thrilled. But a trip that started as a journey to self-actualization turns into to outright horror — fast.

This book is what happens when Scream meets One of Us is Lying. The results? Creepy and incredibly difficult to put down. The Mary Shelley Club is a YA horror novel about a mysterious club of students at Manchester Prep School. The club has a secret goal: to come up with a truly terrifying prank to strike fear in their classmates. It’s all fun and games until the tables are turned and someone starts targeting the Mary Shelley Club itself.

What happens to those horrified final girls in films like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street after the killing is over? Does the fear ever really go away? Are they ever truly able to live normal lives? Real-life final girl Lynnette Tarkington has never been able to move on, but at least she has her support group of final girls with whom she’s been meeting for over a decade. But when one of them misses a meeting, Lynette knows her worst fears have been realized. A killer has returned, and whoever it is is coming for all of them.

I love horror novels that leave you questioning what kind of monsters are worse: supernatural beings, or the monsters living within us? In Near the Bone, Mattie has lived on a mountain with William for as long as she can remember. She knows she can’t make him upset, and she knows they’re completely alone. Or at least she thought she knew that. When she finds a mutilated fox in the woods, Mattie begins to fear there’s something else out there in the woods.

Set in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s, Creatures of Passage is a new horror novel with echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Nephthys Kinwell is not your average taxi driver. Her 1967 Plymouth Belvedere has a ghost in the trunk, and when the car is summoned, Nephthys must use it to drive ill-fated passengers across the city. Aside from driving, she spends her days grieving the loss of her twin brother, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. But when her nephew shows up on her doorstep with a cryptic note about the River Man, everything changes.

Rivers Solomon’s latest novel mixes sci-fi, fantasy, and gothic horror to create a story unlike anything else you’ve ever experienced. Vern is seven months pregnant and is desperately trying to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised. So she flees to the forest, where she gives birth to her twins and plans to raise them far away from the outside world. But to truly escape, Vern will have to fight hard against the community that refuses to let her go, all while her body is going through inexplicable and horrifying changes.

This is one of the most unsettling young adult horror novels I have ever read. Jake Livingston is a teen boy who is different from his classmates in many ways. For one, he’s one of the only Black students at at St. Clair Prep. And then there’s also the fact that he can see dead people everywhere. Most of them are harmless and just go about their own business. But then there’s Sawyer, a new ghost who was a troubled teen in life, and now he wants much more from Jake.

Stephanie Perkins’s new horror novel is being called a companion story to her first foray into horror, There’s Someone Inside Your House. Which, by the way, is about to be a Netflix series! In The Woods Are Always Watching, we get the story of best friends Neena and Josie. They’ve been inseparable throughout high school, but with college on the horizon, they’re about to go their separate ways, and a three-day hike in the woods is their last chance to spend some quality time with one another before the big move. But they’re not the only ones out in the woods. Someone is hunting them.

This book isn’t technically a novel. In fact, it’s a collection of short stories, but the novella A Spell for Foolish Hearts is included in this collection, so we’re going to count it as a new horror novel, especially since it’s so good. In her short story collection Never Have I Ever, author Isabel Yap pulls from urban legends, mythology, immigrant stories, and more. These stories feel like dark, eery, super twisted fairy tales. At the same time, this collection feels deeply personal.

This dark horror novel is set in the 1930s and ’40s over dual timelines in the mountains of Tennessee. In 1933, 9-year-old Stella is staying with her grandmother when she wandering into a dark cavern and encounters an entity called Ghostdaddy. Years later, Stella returns for her grandmother’s funeral and to check on the strange little girl that her grandmother adopted under mysterious circumstances. The girl seems innocent enough, but she carries a power unlike anything Stella could imagine.